


Three Questions

by leradny



Series: The Spirit Trap [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Angst, Gen, Worldbuilding, this story brought to you by the author's love for worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:34:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27278080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leradny/pseuds/leradny
Summary: Thirteen-year-old Princess Zuko visits an oracle to ask of the Avatar's whereabouts--and other matters.
Series: The Spirit Trap [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1939375
Comments: 5
Kudos: 30





	Three Questions

Princess Zuko was not given to dreams before she was scarred, and if she had any, they were normal dreams for all their terror or gladness. She was relieved at first when she took off the bandages to find she still had sight in her scarred eye, but as the days passed she kept catching glimpses of things which were not there when she focused her good eye. Shadowed faces. The point of a tail. Dancing lights.

When she began to _hear_ things through her wrinkled ear, voices that did not belong to her crew, that giggled when she turned round like mischievous children playing hide and seek, she was too frightened to sleep in case they appeared in her mind as well. So she told her uncle about it as they sailed to Drishti, a small island on the border between the Fire Nation and the Western Air Temple. In the mountainous islands of the northern Fire Nation, blind women become oracles called onmyōji in the capital and akashvani in their local tongue.

"I know of the things you see," Iroh tells her. "But you are at a strange age to develop this talent. Only the very young and the very old are given to second sight. Well, you may ask the oracles of this also."

Drishti is the traditional place to start a search for the Avatar, at least for the royal family. Uncle had told her father to allow her one night's stay before heading to the Air Temple. She soothes herself with the thought that all of the former Crown Princes were given the task of finding the Avatar. She is Crown Princess. That she was banished beforehand is practically inconsequential as long as she succeeds.

The daughters of Agni make regular trips down to the sparse few villages to give counsel and replenish supplies, but it is more certain to find them up on the mountain where only women are allowed past a certain point. Zuko would like to have her uncle with her, but no seers are visiting at the moment, so Iroh will wait for her at a small inn at the foot.

After paying for their room, Iroh makes conversation with another old man in the corner, a man with tanned skin and a shock of whitening hair that has been cut too short for a topknot. Another banished soul. Zuko is afraid all of a sudden. He does not seem to like Iroh much. And she has spent too much time with her uncle to think that advanced age makes people any less lethal in combat. What if he is a criminal?

"Uncle," she says.

The man looks up at her with eyes that are a muddy amber, what nobles deem serpent's eyes with varying levels of disdain. It is rarer than brown, certainly better than blue or gray, and yet not as bright as the dragon-golden eyes that Zuko has. This man is not blind. His eyes are clear of drink or weariness despite the late hour and unsettlingly alert, as if he is cataloguing everything about her. Then his fierce gaze halts on her scar and she flinches and looks down, fiddling with her things.

"Uncle, I am going up the mountain. I should be back soon."

It is not her uncle but the other man who objects. "Wait."

"My matter is quite urgent," she snaps.

"So is mine," the man says. He is not from Drishti at all. His accent in the capital's speech and his bearing smacks of the military, army or navy. "Cover your wound, girl. The air is thin and cold up on the summit. Leaving a fresh burn exposed may delay your healing."

"Oh."

She does not want to waste gauze, so she winds a thick scarf around her head and ties a band to secure it. Perhaps she should be ashamed of herself for judging another banished person so harshly. She is not a criminal either, she is simply trying to earn her place back at court.

So she bows to the man and says, "Thank you for your advice, sir."

He nods, and she sees with her good eye that he has scars on his face as well, but over his right side.

She is still glad to leave the inn. Though it is cold and dark and windy, at last she feels like she is doing something tangible rather than waiting on the cramped ship.

 _Agni sees through the eyes of the blind,_ proclaims various signs with carved or raised letters. Or is it 'the blind see through Agni'? It has been a while since Zuko took language classes, and while the slope is gentle the signs are smaller than usual. Higher up, she hears less of the capital's language. Drishti is a soft, musical language, lilting like flutes. Learning the language was difficult for both princesses and Azula discarded the class at once when Zuko received better marks than her.

According to Iroh, Drishti speakers could make an insult sound so flattering that one would thank them afterwards. Their music is similarly ornate. Musicians held high favor in the court before Zuko's time, before the end of the war became imminent and militarization peaked. Perhaps it is the prevalence of blindness--for the seers are free to marry and have children as long as they uphold their duties, and there are family lines which stretch back almost as far as the Nation's founding. Perhaps it is their proximity to the former Western Air Temple. Or perhaps it is the fact that so many women choose to stay here.

The summit path opens up to a large clearing with a temple bearing signs written in both Drishti script and Fire Nation characters: _Onmyōji no Ōkami-Agini_ , _Agni-Akashvani_.

Zuko gratefully knocks on the door. "Śubha sandhyā," she greets the woman at the desk.

"Welcome, traveler," says the portress. "Have a seat, please, and I shall alert the seeress to your presence." She disappears behind a curtain, letting out the fragrance of cinnamon incense.

The open waiting room is empty, warmed by fruitwood fires. A teapot rests over a warmer on the low table with small pitchers of milk and honey beside it on their own warmer. Zuko pours a cup for herself, more interested in the warmth. In the capital they prefer green teas and it is uncouth to add anything, but the northern regions brew their tea black with hot spices and add milk and honey as they please. Funnily enough, the only thing Azula liked about Drishti was the tea their tutor made for them. She never added anything.

Zuko feels a stab of loneliness. She adds more honey than usual and clutches the cup as she sits on one of the cushions filled with soft barley straw. She wonders what Azula had been doing during the Agni Kai.

Exactly after she's taken her first sip, the portress returns. "Seeress Karishma will see you now. Do take your tea. Only leave the cup when you are finished."

There is a small fire inside, banked and smelling of incense. It makes Zuko drowsy, but she blinks and remembers she is not to be here for long.

"Hello, Princess Zuko," says the seeress in the Capital tongue. Either news has come already, or this is proof of her oracular skills. Her eyes are a cloudy brown and her face is dusky. Her robes are the same gray and black of the mountain. "What may I help you to see?"

"Seeress Karishma, I must find the Avatar. Can you give me news of him--or her?"

"Your uncle and grandfather and great-grandfather all came here with the exact same question, my child. We have no intention of disrupting the great balance of the world. What do you intend to do with the Avatar?"

"Please, I mean no harm. I must find the Avatar and bring them to my father in order to go home. Killing them would only result in my search starting over again."

"Death is not the worst thing which may happen to a person, especially an Avatar," Karishma tells her. "What will the Fire Lord do should you find them?"

"I..." She had never really asked. "I don't know what he will do."

"Then I do not know whether I should tell you."

"Please," Zuko says. "My father won't let me go home without the Avatar."

"I feel your pain, Princess Zuko--but I have a duty to the world. I will not aid you to find the Avatar only to rend the world apart."

"Then--" Her cause is not lost. Not yet. She remembers her glimpses of spirits. "May I train here in the ways of divination?"

"I am afraid not, Princess Zuko," she says, not without kindness. "And this I would refuse even if you had not asked me to find the Avatar."

"But I was burned on the left side of my face and I see things now through my scarred eye--" She pulls off her scarf. "Spirits, my uncle told me. Here, I'll prove it." Zuko closes her good eye and sees something behind Karishma which is like a shadow that moves with the seeress, but made of light instead. "I see your spirit."

"That is commendable, but you were scarred by--" Karishma pauses. "The Fire Lord himself?"

Now Zuko knows the seer's gift is true. The first doctor had been replaced for asking how she got burned. The servants speculated that it was a training accident and hadn't been corrected. Ozai had said that the shame in refusing to fight during an Agni Kai was so great that the exact cause for her banishment was not to be revealed or the entire Fire Nation would hate her. But this is Drishti, all the way in the north.

"So it is not enough that your father has cruelly hurt you and banished you from home, but now he sends you on a fruitless quest which all before you have failed?"

"Finding the Avatar is tradition for heirs to the throne," Zuko insists. "I am the Crown Princess--so I have been tasked with this. Tell me, please, why can't I learn to become an oracle?"

"Very well." The seeress doesn't sound quite convinced. "What you see in your blinded eye is granted by the divinity within yourself, an individual matter. We concern ourselves with those women who were blinded by gods and spirits as a sign that they were chosen to lead this life by higher powers."

"But the Fire Lord--" Zuko's throat closes up. "Is the Fire Lord not the chosen of Agni? His will is Agni's--he commands the might of the sun in the heavens--"

"The Fire Lord was born mortal and he will die as mortals do. And every firebender in the world takes their strength from the sun. They are not any closer to godhood than a person who does not bend. It is simply not within your destiny to remain here, and you know this already in your heart of hearts."

Zuko tries not to weep. But the truth is, she is desperate for even the tiniest shred of an excuse to stay here. Even if she cannot stay forever, even if the language is not her native tongue, even though it is cold and windy, Drishti is still just within the bounds of the Fire Nation. Her banishment is in the future at the moment. Once she crosses the border, it will be made even more real, like the burn on her face when she finally looked in the mirror. The thought makes Zuko want to scream and cry like a child.

(Never mind that she is thirteen.)

"Here, child--" She bristles as the oracle addresses her. "Put your hand in mine." Zuko hurriedly wipes her eyes and draws closer, resting her hand palm up in the seer's extended hand. Karishma strokes her hand on both sides, but says nothing.

The older woman's touch is gentle and soft, but after a long silence Zuko asks, "What are you doing?" She had thought there would be a palm reading by touch. Or something of the sort.

"Have you never been comforted before?"

Zuko pulls her hand away. "Of course I have. What sort of question is that?"

"Well, we have time yet, Princess." Karishma is quite unoffended. "Perhaps I may help you with another question."

"My mother," she says at once. "Can you tell me where my mother is?"

"That I will help you with, and gladly. Do you have something of hers?"

She gives Karishma one of the theater masks which Princess Ursa had hidden away, the blue one for the Spirit of Dark Water. The seeress runs her long, slender fingers over the mask, turning it over to feel at the inside. Zuko's heart pounds with excitement--and with fear as well, so much she can't decide which one is stronger.

"You are very conflicted, Princess Zuko. Part of you wishes to know where your mother is, but part of you is afraid to learn of her fate."

Yes, yes, and yes. She is afraid that her mother is not banished but dead.

"I wish I could tell you, but whenever I try to follow your mother's spiritual energy, your own presence blocks the way. It is overburdened with fear."

"What do I do?"

"You must balance your emotions in order to attain the knowledge you seek. It can be done now. Breathe. Know that you are safe here. I will do my best to help you with whatever the answer may be."

Zuko trembles. She steels herself and takes a deep breath, but now that she's trying _not_ to be afraid, the fear lunges into her throat and all she wants to do is run far, far away from the temple. "Tell me anyway!" she begs. "Please, tell me where she is, tell me what happened to her and I'll get over it later!"

"It is not a process which may be done out of order. Listen." Karishma's gaze nearly meets hers, but not quite. "You have been through a great deal of pain in a very short time. You think that there is a pattern to your life, that only the worst things will happen to you. This fear is understandable, but it is based in the past. Your mother may be dead, yes. But there is an equal chance that she is still alive. Once you truly open your mind to the possibility of _any_ answer, whether it is good or bad or neutral, I will be able to see where she is."

Zuko thinks of Ursa. After spending so long trying to push her hurt aside, it comes back with a vengeance when given an inch of leeway. She takes a deep breath and bursts into tears. "I can't."

"Try once more, my dear. Only once--"

"I can't!" she shrieks. "I've come here for nothing-- _nothing!_ "

She snatches the mask up and runs out of the temple, ignoring Karishma's calls and the cup of tea she's left mostly full. The bite of the wind is sharp against the tender flesh of her scar, and Zuko pulls her scarf around her head before hiding her mother's mask in her pack again. All the way down the mountain she weeps. When she slips and twists her ankle, she is relieved in a warped way that she has an excuse for her tears.

She hobbles the rest of the way to the inn and her uncle fusses over her. The man he was speaking to is gone, to her relief. She tells him in a few short words that the oracle was as unhelpful as possible, mentioning nothing about her mother. She doesn't want Iroh to try and convince her to go back.

In the morning they go back to the ship and set off for the Western Air Temple. When Zuko next sees something through her scarred eye, a flicker of light on the waves which might be spirit instead of earthly beast or a glint of the sun--she ignores it. Gradually her second sight fades away and she is relieved, though her uncle is not. "I think if you encouraged your new gift, Princess, it would be helpful indeed. There are other diviners in the world. We could find one of them to train you."

"If a fully-trained oracle gave me no answers to any of my questions, why would my gift be of any more help?"

Zuko storms into her cabin. She has better things to do and no time to waste. She'll train in firebending early tomorrow, then she will study maps of the Western Air Temple before they reach it to make the search more efficient.

She'll have the Avatar before the year is out.

**Author's Note:**

> The Fire Nation sure is close to the Western Air Temple. You think maybe there was some... CULTURAL BLENDING happening? And not forceful like the Earth Kingdom colonization, actual peaceful coexistence. Up until the genocide.
> 
> Also, Guru Pathik had to come from somewhere so why not on a border city?
> 
> Also also, Zuko needs therapy in all universes but that's not new.


End file.
